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First of all, I apologize for being an absent blogger the past 6 weeks or so. My husband and I had to put down my beloved Gladys on September 22nd and since then, life has been quite busy. To make up for my absence, I decided to present you all with a seitan recipe I found on the web from the well-known vegan cook, Isa Chandra Moskowitz. To be perfectly honest, after being spoiled with Happy Herbivore’s amazing recipes, I find her a bit overrated.

This morning, while searching for a good seitan recipe, Post Punk Kitchen’s website popped up. I figured this would be the best recipe since ICM is so famous in the vegan community. Well, I am extremely disappointed 😦

Fill a stock pot with the water, broth and soy sauce, cover and bring to a boil.

In the mean time, in a large bowl mix together gluten and yeast. In a smaller bowl mix together broth, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil and garlic. Pour the wet into the dry and combine with a wooden spoon until most of the moisture has absorbed and partially clumped up with the dry ingredients. Use your hands and knead for about 3 minutes, until it’s an elastic dough. Divide into 3 equal pieces with a knife and then knead those pieces in your hand just to stretch them out a bit. Let rest until the broth has come to a full boil.

Once boiling, lower the heat to a simmer. Add the gluten pieces and partially cover pot so that steam can escape. Let simmer for 45 minutes, turning occasionally. Turn the heat off and take the lid off, let sit for 15 minutes.

Remove from broth and place in a strainer until it is cool enough to handle. Slice and use as desired.

The flavor was good, but the texture was pretty awful. Very porous and mushy 😦

I am keeping the broth combination in the stock pot so I can make a second round of seitan later today using a different recipe. I will let you know how it goes! If you have any recommendations, send them my way!

Tonight, I decided to try a vegan microwaveable dinner by Amy’s. For 240 calories, the Spaghetti Italiano has a nice blend of veggies, pasta, and vegan meatballs. I wish they sold the meatballs separately because these are the best I have tried so far, and I feel like I could consider myself a vegan meatball connoisseur. Meatballs are one of the few meat-based items I miss, but these seem to be a pretty good alternative!

I made pita bread for the first time today. They came out great, all but one puffed up perfectly, and my defected one still tasted great.

I got the recipe from Pinterest. The author says it it important that the dough be rolled evenly to ensure proper puff levels. Mine here were about 1/4 of an inch. I made a few large ones for dinner and some small ones to snack on.

It was really fun watching them puff up in the oven.

I will be making these again because they come out really good and they were super easy.

Pretty much all you do is make a simple dough of yeast, water, salt and flour, roll into small discs, les sit for 35 minutes and pop them in the oven for 10 minutes. The simplicity is beautiful!

Today I finally made it to Spoon Revolution in Concord! Their dishes are 100% vegan and gluten-free. Their menu is very limited so don’t expect a lot of choices if you visit. Today, they had 1 soup (Vegetable Bean), 2 salads (Hummus salad and a garden salad), 3 entrees, and 1 dessert. Each day, they offer a 3 course meal for $8.99, which is what I opted for: Soup or salad, entree, and a dessert, plus iced tea. If you choose something outside of the designated 3 courses, you pay an “a la carte” price. Check out their site for more information.

I will definitely go back to Spoon Revolution! Three things stood out to me, though, that prevented me from giving them 5 stars: the limited menu, the sluggish atmosphere and the lack of organic ingredients. Sorry, Spoon Revolution… you just can’t compete with Susty’s!

I am a firm believer that great things come from one pan. I will throw everything i have in the fridge in a pan and serve it up about once a week or every two weeks.
This time I also used up a can of pigeon peas that I bought for the first time. I’ve never eaten them before so I didn’t know how I would like them. Turns out they were the perfect thing for my vegetable curry.
I cooked onion, garlic, pigeon peas, tomato, carrot, and mushroom in one pan and added a couple scoops of curry powder and soy milk. Simmered for 10 minutes and devoured! I will be buying more pigeon peas next time I go shopping! Next time I’ll use a little less curry powder and I think this meal will be perfect. It’s great for leftovers too!
What do you add to your curry?
Or what’s your favorite one pot meal?
-Kerri

I recently received a massage head of cabbage in my CSA and wanted to make something interesting with it. After requesting help from my facebook friends, I decided on the following recipe. Unfortunately, I got nervous with using 8 tablespoons of butter, so I tweaked it a bit. Still delicious, but not quite “frizzled.” If you would like to try the true frizzled version, click the link below. Otherwise, try out this sauteed “frizzled” cabbage alternative:

I’ve been wanting to cook lentils for a while now. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten the before this year. They always looked weird and un appetizing to me. Some lovely Indian dal changed me mind. I’m still too intimidated to cook Indian food at home, so i made lentil soup. This recipe is simple and tastes great! It came out more like a stew, perfect with a piece of toast. It tastes way better than it looks, trust me 🙂

Simple Lentil Soup:

1 lb green lentils

1 large potato

1 large tomato

3 large carrots

1 med onion

6 leaves of kale

5 cloves of garlic

2 tbs oil

1 quart vegetable stock

2 cups water

salt and pepper

In a blender, pulse garlic, onion, carrots, and kale. This cuts down on the chop time.

Heat oil in large soup pot.

Add vegetables from blender to pot.

Add salt and pepper. (A good large pinch)

Chop potato into small pieces and add to pot, stir occasionally, cook for 5 minutes.

Rinse lentils with cold water.

Add Vegetable stock to pot. (I poured the stock into the blender and then into the pot so I could get every last little piece of the green vegetable mix out of the blender.

Add extra water (I added 2 cups and it came out pretty much like stew, add more water of veg. stock for a thin broth)

Cover pot and let cook for 30 minutes.

taste test lentils, continue to cook until lentils are soft but not mushy.

I recently was at the store and ran across a pre-made Chickpea Salad that was vegan. It tasted great, but I figured I could easily make my own version at home. I copied the ingredients and with the help of a few online recipes, I pieced together what turned out to be an amazing salad!

Kate’s Chickpea Salad

1 can of chickpeas, rinsed

1/2 green pepper, diced

1/2 red pepper, diced

1/2 onion, diced

1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes

1-2 cloves garlic (or the equivalent in garlic powder)

1 handful of fresh cilantro, chopped

2 tablespoons of olive oil

4 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar

Juice of 1 lemon

Salt

Pepper

1. Saute onions and peppers over medium heat for about 4-6 minutes. Onions should be slightly translucent. You can skip this step if you prefer raw veggies.

2. In a large bowl, combine veggies, garlic, chickpeas, and cilantro.

3. In a small bowl, combine vinegar, olive oil and lemon juice. Mix and pour over salad.

4. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Refrigerate before serving so all the flavors can combine.

I also wanted to share one of the most exciting items I have received from my CSA: MELON!

I went to the Vietnam Noodle House on Main St. in Nashua, NH the other night. I’ve been meaning to go there for ages.

It was really late, so I was glad to see they were still open, and still taking sit down customers (they have huge take out popularity).

I was overjoyed to see that half the menu was vegan AND the vegan menu including appetizers were listed first! I Hate having to search forever in a menu to find anything.

Mike was glad to see that they also offered omnivore options too.We Split the vegan egg rolls. They were AWESOME! the best I’ve ever had! perfectly crispy, not oily, and the presentation was lovely. We ate it with the spicy “rooster sauce” (watch out, it’s super spicy)

For my meal I order the house special which was like stir fried veggies with tofu and their three types of marinated seitan (mock beef, mock pork, and mock chicken). The veggies were nice and firm, just how I like them. This was piled high over a bed of broad noodles (resembled wide egg noodles). I loved this dish but next time I’ll try a different noodle.

My meal was only $7.50 and there was enough for great leftovers lunch the next day.

The staff was a bit slow but super polite and friendly resulting in the tip of a lifetime 🙂

My neighbors started a small but amazing garden this year. They generously gave me some of their tomatoes the other day.

These tomatoes are the most flavorful tomatoes I can ever remember tasting. They are far and above, way better than the tomatoes in my CSA.

I ate these tomatoes by themselves and they were awesome, but what really hit the spot was my open faced tomato and mayonnaise sandwich.

I have a sweet memory of my first tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. I was probably 11 when I went through a pretty severe Harriet the Spy phase. Harriet love tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches, so of corse I needed to try one.

My Nanna lived with us, and she saw me making the sandwich in the kitchen and got all excited. Seeing the tomato and mayonnaise sandwich stirred up memories of her past and childhood when she used to make them all the time. She said that she had not seen one in years and years and decided to join me and have a sandwich of her own.

Now tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches are like comfort food. It always brings me back to that day with my Nanna in the kitchen and Harriet the Spy on my mind.

I made my tomato and mayonnaise sandwich open faced this time because the tomatoes were so beautiful I thought it would be a shame to cover them with a piece of bread.

I toasted scali bread in the toaster oven (an italian style bread covered with sesame seeds), and topped the toast with vegan mayonnaise and large slices of tomato.